This long story arc is starting to enter a return trip?

No comment on yesterday’s installment, the inane dialogue, the lack of continuity…

But today we are offered hope!  The return of Dirty Dyer!  To Lost Forest!  Or is it?  Did Jimmy & Sarita’s line go dead?  Or did the phone get ripped out of the wall at Lost Forest?  Did both lines go dead simultaneously?  And don’t be too quick on the draw, Sarita, I’m guessing the cell coverage out in your neck of the woods is pretty sketchy!

I would think that it’s more and more difficult today to do anything without laying down tracks… Electronic ones, anyway…  The Surveillance State has been well established and one need not be of the tinfoil-hat-brigade or reading a Tom Clancy novel to acknowledge that we are being watched, or at least have the opportunity to be watched at any given moment… Such is the case with our current story line.  There are so many breadcrumbs, you’d almost have to try NOT to see what’s going on here.  Although the motives of the bad guy remain an absolute mystery.  Almost like he wants to get caught!

But what the heck did the Sheriff have to say??  Does he know about the robbery?  Did he agree that there might be a connection?  There is no connection between the first and subsequent panels in today’s installment, but then there’s nothing new about that!!

Now that Baldy has made it so incredibly easy to follow his trail, we have to wonder whether Mark has done anything at all to help his own cause…  Baldy just keeps leaving bread crumbs, starting with revealing his face and getting tagged by the Facial Recognition Software to hooking up with Mark and his rental car… now he’s been very careless in not keeping his folding money stowed…  and as a result, Cherry is now going to get a second call, this time from Sarita (her twin sister) after having also been contacted by the FBI, for crying out loud!

Sheriff Don!!  Oh boy!  I can’t wait to meet him!! And witness the inevitable fight over jurisdictional prominence…

Let’s hope not… otherwise they will have to Jimmy (ha! get it??) their way into the car and probably set off the alarm…

And so while Jimmy worries about a little rain, Sarita looks about as determined as a person can be…  taking inventory of what she sees… to what end I wonder?  What clues could he have left them?  Never mind the fact that between Mark and Johnny they now outnumber the bad guys, and assuming that Blondie wouldn’t get in the way of an insurrection, they could have this all wrapped up in less time than it takes to put on their ponchos…

And good point, andysowner, Storm’s a-brewin’… like on Tatooine…  And we have to wonder whether Baldy and Blondie have ever mounted a horse in their lives… I mean, this isn’t Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid we are talking about here…

So as they all ride off for the Ghost Town, with bags packed with money (I’m thinking) and not camera equipment, I am still wondering what Baldy’s end-game is here…  Looking for logic and reason, and finding none.  But in the words of one Ulysses Everett  McGill,  it’s a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart…

…while Rome is burning, figuratively speaking…  Maybe by Independence Day we’ll know what Mark has on his mind, up his sleeve,as it were…

I have to admit I didn’t catch the “If Mark is determined” when I read it the first time- only after I read today’s installment did I catch the fact that Mark ordered up the horses…

…which brings me back to the original (and I know, friends, tired) premise that Mr. Baldy Getaway doesn’t know crap about “getting away.”  How on earth does any of this further his objective of eluding the FBI?

Now that everyone is mad at Mark, even Jimmy, judging by the look on his face in panel three, Sarita is making the gross assumption that everyone is going to the Ghost town as planned, even though nothing has gone to plan ever since Mark showed up with his  new “friends…”

And what the heck s going on with Sarita in panel three?  Is she so mad that her Cherry mask is going to fall off?  Maybe that’s part of the game that they like to play when Mark comes over.  Sarita dresses up like Cherry, and well, who knows…  More than I want to think about!

Should I stay or should I go… ba da da DA DA da.  Should I stay or should I go now?  If I go there will be trouble… If I stay it will be double…

WHY DID YOU YOU GO TO THE RANCH IN THE FIRST PLACE??? Why do I care?  You know, this used to be more fun!  See you all on Monday.

Look who’s getting the dig in now!  Sarita is being accused of harboring a fear or prejudice against bald people, and she fires back against the mullet of the new age- the man-bun…

I meant to mention this yesterday… that Jimmy Ryan sort of reminds me of an old Mark Trail character Johnny Mallotte…

Johnny owns a fishing camp has has produced about 17 children… now there’s a man’s man!!  What’s crazy is that the child nearest him, stage left, bears a striking resemblance to Rusty, but in fact is not… hmmmm… speaking of which, I wonder what’s going on back at Lost Forest…

And what exactly does a “Professional Camera Crew” look like?  Do they have little black berets and pencil-thin mustaches?  And speaking of not looking like something we’d expect, what’s with Johnny Lone Elk?  Long hair, unshaven, prize-fighter’s nose, scowl… He has every marker of a bad guy in the Trailverse… why he looks like he’s even done hard time!

I am still totally befuddled how any of this advances the “get-away” objectives of Baldy.  Now he has three more people who can easily make him, that he will have to ice…